Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos

Thrasyvoulos Tsalakotos (3 April 1897-15 August 1989) was a Lieutenant-General of the Hellenic Army of Greece. Tsakalotos was a veteran of World War I, the Turkish War of Independence, and World War II. From May 1951 to November 1952, he was Chief of the Hellenic Army General Staff.

Biography
Thrasyvoulos Tsalakotos was born in Preveza, Janina Vilayet, in the Ottoman Empire (present-day Greece). He entered the Hellenic Army Academy in 1913 and graduated as a Second Lieutenant in 1916, and he fought in World War I on the Macedonian Front and in the Turkish War of Independence, rising to Captain in 1920. During the Interwar Era, Tsakalotos had a teaching post in the military academy and was made a Colonel in 1938.

During the Greco-Italian War, Tsakalotos led the 3/40 Evzone Regiment, and in 1942, he escaped from Greece when Nazi Germany invaded the country, fleeing to Egypt, controlled by the United Kingdom. He commanded Free Greek forces during the Italian campaign of World War II, fighting in the offensive against the Gothic Line at the Battle of Rimini. Later, he returned to Greece and fought alongisde EDES in the Dekemvriana of 3 December 1944-11 January 1945, in which 90,000 British and 11,600 EDES troops fought the 17,800 communist ELAS troops in Athens. In March 1945 he became the commanding officer of the Greek 2nd Infantry Division, and he was made a Major-General after the war. From May 1951 to November 1952 Tsakalotos was the Chief of the General Staff of the Hellenic Army, and from 1957 to 1960 he was the ambassador to the Soviet Union. Following the 1974 Metapolitefsi period following the 1974 Greek coup d'etat, he became a supporter of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement of Andreas Papandreou. In 1984, he made a symbolic gesture by shaking hands with his former communist enemy Markos Vafiadis, showing the healing following the Greek Civil War. He died in 1989 in Athens.